Rob House, a Prince William County farmer, speaks to the planning commission about the proposed rural preservation plan.
The Prince William Planning Commission likely will not take a vote on the county’s controversial rural preservation plan before the end of the year, meaning both the newly elected board of supervisors — and their appointed planning commissioners — will decide the future of the county’s rural crescent.
That was the consensus planning commissioners reached Wednesday, Oct. 23 – the planning commission’s first work session on the planning staff’s recommended zoning changes for 72,000 acres of the 117,000-acre rural crescent.
Development is currently limited in the rural crescent by restrictions that generally prohibit connections to the county’s public sewer line and restrict building to one home per 10 acres.
Those rules have been in place since 1998, when the board of supervisors approved them in an effort to put the brakes on suburban sprawl. The latest review those rules stem from a study the supervisors commissioned in 2013 and then shelved for several years until this past summer.
The planning staff held public meetings on the rural preservation study and a proposed new plan for the area in June, July and September. It was initially thought the planning commission would vote on the staff’s plan before the end of the year, but members decided there is simply too much to review in the new proposal to meet that timeline.
Now, they’ve scheduled a second work session for Wednesday, Nov. 13, and held out the possibility of holding a formal public hearing on the plan over three days: on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Dec. 3, 4 and 5.
Still, commissioners said it’s not likely they’d follow through with a formal vote on a recommendation given the complexity of the changes and the Nov. 5 elections, which some planning commissioners noted will result in significant changes on both the board of supervisors and the planning commission.
All eight seats on the board of supervisors are up for re-election Nov. 5. Four of the eight current supervisors are not running for re-election, either because they lost their primaries or decided not to seek re-election.
Board Chairman Corey Stewart, R-At Large, and Supervisor Maureen Caddigan, R-Potomac, opted not to seek re-election. Supervisors Marty Nohe, R-Coles, and Frank Principi, D-Woodbridge, lost their party nominations to primary challengers in May and June, respectively. All members of the planning commission are appointed by the members of the board of supervisors.
Several commissioners said the best they can do at this point is compile a summary report of their findings the new planning commission might use to make a final recommendation to the incoming board of supervisors.
“I think [the new planning commissioners] would relish that document as a starting point so they could finish the work,” said Planning Commissioner Rene Fry (Potomac ).
Planning Commission Chairman William Milne (Occoquan) agreed. “The last thing we want to do is rush the decision and make it half-baked because we owe whomever is in office at that point … a good, cogent, transparent, honest plan,” Milne said.
‘Domino effect’ of development?
The comments came after the commissioner heard a presentation on the staff’s recommended changes for the rural crescent from Planning Director Rebecca Horner and then sat through about an hour and a half of comments from more than 30 residents.
Many residents expressed concerns about the proposed “conservation residential” zoning designation that would allow cluster developments as dense as one home per acre in the rural crescent as long as 60 percent of the total land in a subdivision is permanently conserved via conservation easements. The designation would also allow public sewer lines to extend into the rural crescent, something the plan’s opponents consider the first-step to cascading residential development.
Other speakers expressed support for parts of the rural preservation plan they see as a way to incentivize conservation easements. The plan would allow large-plot landowners to sell their development rights the county or developers through “purchase of development rights” and “transfer of development rights” programs.
Some planning commissioners expressed concerns. Planning Commissioner Patty McKay (Brentsville) asked Horner several questions, including how the county would stop a “domino effect” of rezoning requests that could result if supervisors approve the “conservation residential” zoning designation and new connections to sewer lines.
Horner said any landowner would have the option of asking the supervisors to rezone their property to the conservation residential designation to allow its accompanying connections to the public sewer line as long as the plan’s criteria are met.
Horner said such requests may also require a “comprehensive plan amendment,” which is a request to change an area’s designation on the county’s long-term planning map.
Such approvals are supposed to be more difficult to obtain but are approved with some regularity in Prince William County.
McKay also said she’s “100 percent against” the idea of transferring development rights into the rural crescent, which would effectively boost residential density. She also questioned the idea of transferring development rights to other areas of the county, such as Gainesville, which are inside the county’s “development area” but are already fairly congested.
“If you are going to talk about sending thousands of new units to the Gateway area, Gainesville people are going to go nuts,” McKay said. “One of my concerns is that we are trying to urbanize too many areas of the county and the citizens are pushing back. … We need to work on that.”